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Preparing Our Teens for College Life

Many parents worry that their teen will “fall away” from the faith when going off to college. This is a legitimate fear as many students stop attending church and move to a more secular lifestyle while in college; however, this does not need to happen. I feel that many of the students who drop out of church at college have never really taken on the faith for themselves, and when confronted with anti-Christian professors and new friends, they do not have the ammunition they need to with stand the assault. As Christian parents, we can help them by preparing them for what they will find on the college campus.

One of the main things needed is a solid Christian worldview. This encompasses much more than just having a few pat answers to questions, since it involves applying Christianity to all of life. There are many great studies that can be done and more are coming out each year. Josh McDowell wrote “A Ready Defense” that is good reading for anyone interested in the subject of defending his faith. What we used was “How Now Shall We Live?” by Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey. There is a discussion guide that goes with the book that gives some helps in using the book. It took us the better part of a year to read through the book and discuss what was covered, and we had some marvelous discussions while reading the book together. I would recommend that the book not be done too early, as generally a child will not be dealing with a lot of the issues covered in the book until they are 17 or 18 years old. Nancy Pearcey has a book coming out soon that will be a sequel to this book and should be very good.

If you want something to begin with younger students, we found “Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door” by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler to be a great choice. Both of our girls enjoyed this devotional approach, and felt it gave them a good basis in the area of worldviews for junior high and early high school students.

We offer a section in the homeschool2college that deals with this area. It is the section called, “Big Changes”, and we address some of the issues that your student will face at college. Be sure to check that page of our site for more information.

The combined value of the two coins spawned from the so-called forking is less than that of a single Bitcoin Cash coin Wednesday, according to data from exchange Poloniex. Bitcoin Cash SV, as one version is called, is trading at about US$96.50, and Bitcoin Cash ABC, the other is US$289, or lower than what Bitcoin Cash closed at US$425.01 yesterday.

The fallout is markedly different from a year ago, when Bitcoin Cash initially split from Bitcoin in August of 2017. The two coins ended up being worth more than Bitcoin alone, benefiting investors. As a result, that split lead to a so-called forking craze, in which multiple developer teams rushed to get out new versions such as Bitcoin Gold by tinkering with the software code.

The two coins are likely trading sideways amid uncertainty over whether both of them will stick around, and which one will end up leading further development on the main branch of Bitcoin Cash. Companies and investors supporting each version are jockeying for dominance, and “it’s too early to tell” which will win out, said Lucas Nuzzi, director of technology research at Digital Asset Research.

Washington (CNN)Asked if she is concerned that foreign dictators are using President Donald Trump’s claims about “fake news” to oppress journalists, State Department spokesman Heather Nauert said Thursday that it is real, both in the US and overseas.

Nauert had made remarks in support of foreign journalists when she was asked whether Trump’s complaints about the press — which includes his use of a phrase from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to describe the media as the “enemy of the people” — gave her pause.

“Fake news, I hate to say, is a real thing,” said Nauert, who worked as an anchor and reporter at Fox News before joining the State Department. She is reportedly Trump’s favored candidate to be the next US ambassador to the UN.
Nauert was asked whether she had any concern that dictators and others have used Trump’s dismissal of “fake news” as a rallying cry for oppression of journalists. She demurred.

“When the President has spoken about fake news, when other world leaders have spoken about fake news, there is such a thing,” Nauert said.
Asked if she sees those she accuses of “fake news” as “the enemy of the people,” Nauert said, “I don’t think that news reporters are the enemy of the people. What I do think — hold on. What I do think is very dangerous is when the news is dishonest.”
Nauert offered her defense of Trump’s assault on press coverage he dislikes at a time when attacks on journalists worldwide have risen sharply.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said that 2017 set a new record for the number of journalists jailed around the world, with Turkey, China and Egypt named as “the world’s worst jailers” of reporters. Hungary and the Philippines, democracies with populist leaders, have pursued charges against high profile journalists that could result in prison terms.

Media groups have also documented increasing violence against reporters. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was among journalists killed in the last year by state actors, simply for doing their job.